The Ashes of Snow by Carla Chan
Carla Chan obtained her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. She works with a variety of media including video, installation, photography and interactive media. Much like the never-ending development of new technology Chan considers media art as a medium with infinite possibilities for artistic expressions.
The Ashes of Snow
The Ashes of Snow is an immersive environment that mistreats and misplaces a natural phenomenon: snow. By applying thermochromic technology and a particle falling system, the artwork simulates snowing indoor, By manipulate the temperature inside the particle falling system, the snow’s colour change in greyscale during falling. And eventually the white snow changed to black on the air.
The process seems to be an ordinary snowy environment, but there is subtle drama within. The black tainted snow causes a sense of misplacement of the snowing experience, bringing the audience a twist in the supposedly dreamy imagination of pure white snow. By manipulating the colour of snow and the falling pattern, the flaws, contamination and pollution are exaggerated as the snow falls. Such a foreign but familiar environment gives the audience a space to think and reflect in the bittersweet beauty of destruction. In the process of snow falling in black and white, the artwork also creates a physical landscape of white snow tainted in black at times. With a hint of traditional Chinese ink painting, the minimal visual experience conveys an atmosphere that is dramatic, poetic, pessimistic and concerning for the future.
Ultimately, the impure snowy landscape aims to heighten the sense and awareness of climate change, global warming and pollution in the global scale. In reality, black snow is oftentimes related to heavy pollution and contaminated environment, by staging the audience in the simple, yet dramatic immersive environment. The gradient change of snow color is giving a space for audience to think deeply of a non- exit and twisted situation and yet creates a stage of destruction and invertible situation.
